Hugo Alternatives for Self-Hosted

Are you tiered of the complexity when it comes to setting up a website? A static site generator like Plenti might be your solution. Plenti is a static site generator written in Go for speed and utilize Svelte for ease of use on the frontend. With Plenti, you can ditch the headaces of maintaing a content management system and SQL databases. Plenti simply connects to your Git backend and be pushed to production using GitHub Action or Gitlab Pipelines.

A fast, simple & powerful blog framework and static site generator powered by Node.js. With Hexo, you can quicly build static websites and blogs that generates at an increaible speed. Hexo generates hundreds of files per seconds and quickly builds and push your website to deployment, with a single command. You can have your site up and running in minutes on well known hosts and platforms like GitHub Pages, Heroku, Digital Ocean and other platforms. The framework support all features of  GitHub Flavored Markdown and most Octopress plugins by default. Hexo is released free and open-source under the MIT License.

Jekyll is a static site generator written in Ruby. With Jekyll, you can transform your plain text into static websites or blogs. No more database, and cumbersome updates and install, simply focus on your content. In Jekyll, permalinks categories, pages, posts, and custom layouts are factored into the design, so you can get started writing content, right away. For layouts and template, Jekyll uses the Liquid templating language which allow you to design and structure a site to your liking. In a nutshell Markdown, Liquid, HTML and CSS goes in, and out comes a static site ready for deployment.

Sapper is a free and open source application framework for Svelte. With Sapper developers can build server-side rendered applications that does not compromise on SEO, load times or progressive enhancement. Your Sapper app will handle navigation instantaneously, much like any other SPA.

Craft CMS is a flexible, user-friendly CMS for creating custom digital experiences on the web and beyond. Craft is designed from the ground up to empoer the entire creative process. From the user-friendly interface to the completely customizable back end, everything you interact with is designed to just make sense. With Craft your content comes first. No more trying to make your content work within the confines of the CMS.

WordPress powers roughly 30% of all web pages online. It's a free and open source CMS designed and developed for self-hosted publishing by Automattic, Inc. The software is written in PHP and utilize either MySQL or MariaDB as a database, and is compatible with most web hosts. Wordpress includes a plugin architecture and a templating system that can be used to extend and customize your website. These are commonly known as WordPress plugins and WordPress themes and make up a whole open source and commercial eco-system where anyone is free to create products for the platform. 

An open-source tool for managing content across all your omni-channel digital experiences. Directus is free and open-source headless CMS written in PHP, that takes a data first approach. Developers and content creators use Directus to manage content and generate a powerful API that can be used by any frontend technology. Directus can be self-hosted and is absolutely free.

October is a free, open-source and self-hosted content management system written in PHP on top of the framework Laravel. The CMS features a universal extendable dashboard, inspector, reusable CMS components and a plugin system that can be used to extend functinality of your website. The plugin store contains thousands of community-made plugins that can either be purchased or installed for free. As a data store, October CMS supports MySQL, PostgreSQL and SQLite.

Gatsby is a free and open source framework and site generator that helps developers to build blazing fast websites and apps. The framework is based on React and include a plugin ecosystem that can be used to extend the capabilities of Gatsby. With Gatsby you can pull data from headless CMSs, SaaS services, APIs, databases, even your file system with the help of GraphQL. If you are looking to build a fast website that scales with time, Gatsby might your best pick.

Backdrop is a full-featured content management system written in PHP. The Backdrop CMS allows non-technical users to manage a wide variety of content. It can be used to create all kinds of websites including blogs, image galleries, social networks, intranets, and more.

Ghost is a free and open-source headless CMS and blogging platform developed by Ghost Foundation. With Ghost you can manage content in style, the user experience provided by the software is intuitive and encourages writing. Ghost is written in JavaScript for the Node.js platform and is released under the MIT license.

Grav is a modern free and open source flat-file content management system. With Grav, you can publish content and build sites in a fast, flexible and simple manner with the file-based web platform. Grav requires zero installation and is just an zip archive that can be extracted to start using the CMS. Grave also comes with a powerful package management system that allow you to extend the feature set of Grav CMS. With the package management system you can install and upgrade themes and plugins written specifically for Grav. The software is written in PHP and released fully free and open-source under the MIT License.